Beyond the anger

Enough is clearly enough. The anger we saw spill out on the streets of Delhi was an organic act of intensely felt outrage. A spontaneous movement without any leaders or political affiliation, it is a sign that something has finally given way. The idea of living in constant fear, and having to make do with the platitudes of those in charge is no longer going to be met with stoic indifference. The reaction of the state reveals the poverty of its perspective. To lathicharge a largely non-violent protest several times and then to clamp down prohibitory orders to prevent the protests from taking place is an act of violent suppression, and comes from an ingrained instinct to convert the protest into the problem.

And yet, when it comes to this specific incident, the quality of policing was not really the key problem. A bus that shows no sign of trouble at a reasonable hour at night has no reason to be stopped or inspected; without reasonable suspicion or any hint of trouble, the police cannot be expected to anticipate an incident of this kind. And while this was clearly not the time to gloat about it, the police action after the event has been swift. If the problem was confined to Delhi or was principally about increasing safety levels on buses, it would have been possible to take specific steps and improve the situation. The problem however, is a much larger one, and resides in a much more complex ecosystem.

The call for the death penalty or the demand for fast track courts for such crimes needs to be understood in this context. From the perspective of the citizens, the need to mirror the enormity of the problem with the severity of the punishment is easy to sympathise with. But it should be read as a sign of a larger disenchantment rather than responded to literally. It is easy to confuse the ‘bigness’ of the solution with its effectiveness; in this case isolated actions will not solve a problem as deeply rooted as this one . The problem cannot be defined through the filter of rape alone; it is a much larger issue that involves the way in which women are viewed and responded to. The belief is that any woman on the streets is fair game; the only question seems to be whether that viewpoint stops at fantasising, passing lewd comments or actually taking any action, be it a form of molestation or rape. The apparent harmlessness of ‘eve-teasing’ that gets taken in one’s stride opens the door for an escalating spiral of violence. The kind of policing that is required is not retrospective, but which creates a general air of lawfulness where any infraction, however minor is punished with a predictable degree of regularity.

It was instructive that on the first night after the event, a television reporter reporting on the incident was propositioned on camera by a group of car-borne youth who showed no fear of being filmed. The news channel tracked some of them down; the mother in one instance pleaded on behalf of the son, but the boys themselves seemed unfazed. It was as if they sensed that there would face no consequences of any kind from either from the administration or even from their peers. This is the greatest tragedy of it all- when such behaviour gets implicit social sanction for it means that we are dependent on the law alone, that society has withdrawn its mechanisms for keeping behaviour in check. If there are no social consequences for an illicit action, only legal hurdles, then the problem of morality turns into an opportunity of convenience.

The problem cannot be divorced from the larger culture in which we reside. The films that we see, the celebrities we ogle, the thrall of consumerist bodies in slow motion, all crackling with pornographic electricity. The privileging of desire and its presentation as a self-justifying need helps create a climate when all that is desired becomes an object that can be bought through money or overwhelmed through power. The more women assert themselves as individuals, the greater the need to subdue them. The traditional anxiety about women gets amplified into need for domination and possession aided by a false sense of easy access that modern notions of consumerism fosters. The democratisation of desire is accompanied by the legitimisation of lust. The neat and largely imagined distinction between the ‘criminal type’ and the ‘law-abiding citizen’ has blurred significantly. The sense that anyone can be the next murderer or rapist serves to create a widespread sense of insecurity. Conversely, the policing mechanism, far from becoming available to all, is retreating into becoming the private army of the powerful. An underlying sense of unease, of the fear that the powerful can not only get away with anything, but do so with impunity is palpable. The media plays the game at both ends, at one level creating the climate of desire while simultaneously engaging in shrill criticism after the event.

As a result, a sense of anarchy and hysteria feed on each other. Debates are fierce but narrow, angry but unproductive. The system is too well entrenched to change, nor is it really pushed to. In asking for special measures to counter this problem, we are in effect acknowledging that the system as it exists cannot deliver. Without fundamental and systemic changes across the spectrum of the administration- the Parliament, the elections, bureaucracy, police and judiciary, and without engaging in a larger societal dialogue, a problem of this kind can no longer be tackled. This is not a particularly comforting thought, for it tells that no easy answers exist but the time has come to go beyond symbolic steps and demand wholesale change. It is time to look beyond the anger, beyond the apparent demands being made in this case and focus on the pushing the system to transform itself- in its entirety.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Santosh Desai is a leading ad professional. He says he has strayed into writing entirely by accident, and for this he is "grateful". "City City Bang Bang" looks at contemporary Indian society from an everyday vantage point. It covers issues big and small, tends where possible to avoid judgmental positions, and tries instead to understand what makes things the way they are. The desire to look at things with innocent doubt helps in the emergence of fresh perspectives and hopefully, of clarity of a new kind.

Santosh Desai is a leading ad professional. He says he has strayed into writing entirely by accident, and for this he is "grateful". "City City Bang Bang" l. . .